CHAPTER 29
FRUSTRATION
Johnny, Ned, and Dooley sat a short distance down the path from the Cube, where they could hopefully watch it safely. They had done so for almost half an hour, and had so far observed only the deserted path of another world. The doppelganger Elizabeth sat slightly further away from the Cube, and had dozed off.
Dooley’s eyes were on the Cube, but they were glazed over. His thoughts were mostly of the forest life forces that seemed to surge around him. It was as if his vision had been clouded, and now, with his unicorn knife and the enhancing effects of the Cube, everything was sharp and clear and even more wonderful than he had ever imagined.
Johnny looked at Dooley and smiled. He could imagine what his friend was experiencing and was happy for him, but had to turn to the business at hand. They had learned more about the mysterious Cube over the last few days than the Tribe had learned in all the previous centuries. Now it was time to put it all together.
“Tell me about when you found what you thought was my father’s body, Ned.”
Ned shook his goat head and moaned. It was one of the worst days in his life that Johnny was asking him to remember. Mark had been a close friend to Ned, and the father of his closest human friend, young Johnny Goth. Finding him dead had been a tremendous shock.
Johnny rested a strong hand on his little friend’s shoulder, steadying him. “I know it hurts to think of such things, but please try. Exactly where did you find him, for example?”
Ned nodded, stood, and motioned Johnny to follow him. He walked about twenty meters down the path, stopped, and pointed to the ground near the One Tree.
“Here? So far from the Cube? But that can’t be right. It should have been right next to the Cube. It was a dead body being exchanged, it couldn’t have moved itself!”
Ned shrugged. “Baaaaaaa,” he remarked, anxiously.
Johnny sighed. Ned was obviously telling the truth. When they were kids Ned would pull tricks on almost everyone, sometimes stretching truth into a very tall tale, but Johnny could always tell when he did it. “Sorry. OK, where did you find Mort?”
Ned pointed again. “Baaaaaa. Same place Johnny, honest!”
Johnny shook his head. How was that possible? He had witnessed Elizabeth’s transfer himself. If Dad and Mort had been switched the same way the bodies of the doppelgangers should have been found within a few meters of the Cube.
No, there was no avoiding an unlikely conclusion. Someone had to have moved the doppelganger bodies from near the Cube before Ned found them.
That line of thought was disrupted when the Cube switched over to a new universe. A dozen solders with army uniforms and rifles peered out at them in astonishment. One appeared to be shouting at them angrily, and gesturing with his rifle.
Johnny wrote on his white board with a marker and showed it to the solders: “We are looking for a lost Elizabeth, Mark and Mort. Are any of them in your world?”
One of the solders hastily pulled pen and papers from a pocket and replied. “You are trespassing on Government property. Come out and surrender to us or we will use force,” it said.
“Impossible,” Johnny replied, with an amused smile.
The soldiers became agitated and for the next half hour tried in vain to penetrate the Cube using rifles, torches, acids, explosives, and artillery, and through repeatedly driving a massive tank into it. Johnny and the others in their universe mostly ignored them. They only bothered to take cover when some sort of huge laser cannon was brought to bear on them, but they needn’t have worried. They quickly realized that the Cube must limit the intensity of light penetration, since only a pale, weak, harmless beam of laser light got through.
The Cube shimmered and the next view was a totally black one, and Johnny concluded that they were viewing an obsidian rock-face. In the alternative universe being viewed the Cube was apparently encased in volcanic rock. There was nothing they could do but wait, while preparing for the next view.
“This is discouraging,” said Johnny. “We have no idea whatsoever about when we’ll see Elizabeth again, if ever.”
“We’ll find her, Johnny,” said Dooley. “I know we will.”
“There may be an infinite number of other worlds, with only one of them containing our Elizabeth. If we do see an Elizabeth, how will we even know if she’s the right one?”
“I don’t know how,” said Dooley. “But Elizabeth is smart too. Maybe she’ll know.”
“Maybe,” said Johnny. “We can get her to name her cat and her Aunt and ask her about falling off a cliff.” Using a marker, Johnny wrote several questions on pieces of paper, forming small signs that could be used for conversation.
The Cube shimmered and Elizabeth appeared. Two Bears stood next to her, holding her hand tightly, but he relaxed and actually smiled when he saw Johnny, Dooley, and beyond them the napping Elizabeth doppelganger. But she stared with apprehension at Ned.
“Our Elizabeth is lost,” said Johnny’s first paper.
The Two Bears Doppelganger pointed at his Elizabeth and nodded, then wrote on a chalkboard and held it up. “What is the name of her dog?” it asked. He pointed past them, at the Elizabeth doppelganger.
Johnny summoned their doppelganger Elizabeth to come closer and join them. “I don’t have a dog,” was her answer.
Johnny smiled and showed his next sign. “What is your cat’s name, Elizabeth?” it asked.
“I don’t have a cat,” was the other Elizabeth’s answer.
Both parties were disappointed. Neither world had the Elizabeth that the other sought.
“Who is your furry friend,” the Two Bears asked next, as he pointed to Ned.
“One of the People,” Johnny replied. “A shape shifter.”
Two Bears shook his head and shrugged in puzzlement.
“Wow!” exclaimed Johnny. “No People in their world either!”
For the remaining half hour much other curious information was exchanged. They found out that the other universe had both a Mark and a Mort that belonged where they were, so switching them between universes was out of the question.
“If we get a chance to get your daddy or Mort we’ll need their dead doppelganger bodies here to do the switch,” observed Dooley astutely.
“You are right,” agreed Ned.
“Yes, it could be just as likely to find Mort or Dad as it is to find Elizabeth,” added Johnny.
The Cube shimmered, and they were looking at a deserted patch of woods. It was probably a world where everyone was where they were supposed to be, thought Johnny enviously. He shook his head and sighed, and was then quiet for several seconds before he again spoke. “I have just now asked Two Bears to ask Pru to fetch the body of my father’s doppelganger. He’ll also see if that Artistic License bunch can fetch Mort’s body from the cemetery in town.
“But it could be highly unlikely that we’ll find any of them in the Cube. Some physicists interpret quantum mechanics as an infinite splitting of universes. Every quantum interaction results in a new universe, implying far more universes than there are particles in any one universe. What if what we see in the Cube is a few of the universes that result, randomly selected? There could be countless new universes created each second. If there are infinite universes, the chances of repeating a universe would be very small; zero for all practical purposes. Not only that, our own universe will have split countless infinities of times since Elizabeth left it. Maybe the whole concept of trying to return to one’s own universe doesn’t even make sense.”
Dooley shook his head. “Maybe Pop would understand those things, but not me. But we’ll get her back, Johnny, I know that for a fact.”
Johnny wished he had Dooley’s confidence, but their efforts seemed to be getting nowhere. Still, he didn’t totally discount his friend’s optimism either. Dooley always had a way of knowing such things. The other kids used to tease him about some of the strange things he said, but it usually turned out that he was right. Hopefully Dooley was right thi
s time too, though there seemed to be too much cold logic going against it.
He hoped that Elizabeth was making headway on her end, because from where he stood, things seemed altogether too damn slow and hopeless.